FGI-GSRx software-defined GNSS receiver goes open source

The open-source release of FGI-GSRx software receiver widens its user base and offers researchers, students and developers a chance to utilize the research platform for innovations.

The GSRx software receiver, developed by the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI), is now being released as open source for use by the GNSS community.

FGI-GSRx has been extensively used as a research platform for the last decade in different national and international research projects to develop, test and validate novel receiver processing algorithms for robust, resilient and precise positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).

FGI-GSRx has been used to develop algorithms for detecting GNSS jamming and spoofing events in several past R&D projects. It is also used to develop mitigation algorithms to offer a resilient PNT solution to the user.

The FGI-GSRx software receiver will be discussed in the next edition of the textbook GNSS Software Receivers by Borre, Fernández-Hernández, Lopez-Salcedo and Bhuiyan. The book will be published by Cambridge University Press in August.

Uses of the software receiver

The software receiver can be used in universities and other research institutes to provide graduate-level students and early-stage researchers with hands-on training in GNSS receiver development. It can also be used in the GNSS industry as a benchmark software-defined receiver implementation.

The software receiver is already being used in the “GNSS Technologies” course offered widely in Finland at the University of Vaasa, Tampere University, Aalto University and the Finnish Institute of Technology.

The open-source release of FGI-GSRx will enable any third-party developer, researcher or student to use the platform to develop, test and validate innovative algorithms. It offers a flexible interface and configuration files, so that researchers can further implement their own codes or algorithms at different receiver processing stages. This allows the user to go much deeper into the coding without addressing all the implementation details, explained Research Professor Zahidul Bhuiyan, FGI, National Land Survey of Finland.

Meeting evolving industry needs

The GNSS market has faced a transformation in the past two decades, with new features and signal properties being added to the modernized satellite navigation systems at an increasing pace. A software-defined receiver enables algorithm optimization and testing in this rapidly changing industry.

The multi-constellation FGI-GSRx receiver has evolved to provide diversity and improved accuracy. When the FGI-GSRx was first developed, it was able to track the Galileo test satellites GIOVE A and GIOVE B. Since then, FGI researchers have been continuously developing new capabilities to the software receiver with the inclusion of Galileo in 2013, the Chinese satellite navigation system BeiDou in early 2014, the Indian regional satellite navigation System NavIC in late 2014, and the Russian satellite navigation system GLONASS in 2015.